Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer 9)

All those millennia of vamps, and yet so few survived. Maybe because of the same thing that had started happening to Mircea. They began to obsess over something in their human lives that hadn’t gone according to plan, or that had been left unresolved when they Changed. And by “obsess,” I mean fixate on to the point that they couldn’t see anything else.

Including the assassins sneaking up behind them.

It reminded me of the way some ghosts hung around after death, trying to put right events that had taken place, in some cases, hundreds of years before. Of course, for the ghosts, that was usually impossible, both because of how hard it was for them to actually interact with the world and because the people who had wronged them were often long dead themselves. That was not always true for vampires, however.

Especially not for vampires who knew a Pythia.

I’d found out about all this—­what had happened to Elena, Mircea’s plan for me, and his growing obsession—­not by Mircea telling me about it, as he should have done, but in an explosive confrontation with said crazy dhampir. Who had almost killed me, assuming me to be a threat to her beloved father. Who had then, and only then, spilled the beans. Because the consul had already let part of the story “slip” anyway, and because he was shortly going into Faerie at the head of our army and wanted to make sure that Elena was taken care of in case he didn’t come back.

Out of obligation, of course.

So yeah. I’d been shocked and horrified and heartbroken and a bunch of other things, and to a degree, I still was. But I got it, okay? I wasn’t completely heartless; I understood why you’d want to save someone whom you’d loved enough to marry, and who had given birth to your only flesh and blood child.

I even understood why it must have seemed like a godsend to Mircea when he’d discovered that there were people who could actually travel in time. And could undo the terrible travesty of justice that had ended with his wife writhing out her final hours on a sharpened stake set up by his own brother. Anyone would understand that.

But anyone wasn’t a Pythia, and responsible for guarding the timeline. Like from interference that might end up with a lot of other people dead who weren’t supposed to be! Of course, Mircea wasn’t in love with them—­and he was in love with Elena, whether he realized it or not. It had been in his face that night, when he finally told me everything, even while he was vehemently declaring otherwise. It had been in the flashes of images I’d caught of his past, either through my seer abilities or because his mental powers were projecting them unknowingly in his distress. It had been clear as anything.

He still loved her, and he hadn’t needed a geis for that.

So how was I supposed to tell him no?

But that was the job, and something every other Pythia had managed for five hundred years. And I probably would have, too, but before I could he’d struck preemptively, sending me a gorgeous copy of Le Morte d’Arthur as a gift. I still had it in the library. It was a beautiful thing, gilt edged and leather bound, with full-­color illustrations scattered throughout.

It was lovely . . .

It was also a threat. A handsome, classy threat, because Mircea was a handsome, classy guy. But a threat nonetheless.

Because if I didn’t do what he wanted, he was going to release to the public a secret he’d discovered about the other man in my life, John Pritkin.

My one-­time bodyguard and partner in crime, Pritkin had been by my side almost since I’d stumbled into this crazy new life. We’d started out hating each other, had slowly learned to tolerate and then to respect each other, and had finally ended up in love almost without realizing it, even though we hadn’t had a geis. But Pritkin wasn’t his real name—­at least, not the one he’d been born with—­and Mircea knew it.

And soon, so would everybody else, if I didn’t pony up.

Dating Merlin, it seemed, had its downsides.

Not that we were dating. I’d barely seen him since a demon curse had left him more or less dead for two weeks and sent me on a crazy race through time after his disembodied soul. I’d gotten him back, and had foolishly thought he’d stay put for a while. Ha!

Something weird had happened in Hong Kong recently, and Pritkin had gotten up—­off his literal deathbed—­to go deal with it. Of course he had. Without so much as telling me a word about it, because I might have had an objection to his getting himself killed just after getting himself killed!

Honestly, was it any wonder that, sometimes, I just wanted to stay in a bubble bath and never get out?

A bubble bath in a vamp-­built penthouse in a hotel that Mircea owned, I thought evilly. One I was taking while he and the senate battled it out for who got to pull my strings this week. I was supposed to be an independent entity, able to arbitrate between the various supernatural groups because I wasn’t beholden to one side over another. Could I do that here? Could I do that anywhere?

I’d told the covens that I could—­that I would—­and had somehow sounded confident doing it. But if Agnes hadn’t managed it, what shot did I have? I couldn’t even keep Mircea from taking my goddamned bodyguards! It was maddening!

Like my loofah brush suddenly deciding to break. I guess I’d been scrubbing a little too hard, and it snapped, causing me to spear my damned leg with a splinter. Damn it!

I threw it across the room, which was childish, but I was stressed. And was even

more so when it hit not the smirking dolphins on the far wall but something in between. Something that wasn’t there, because nothing was, but that gave a yelp anyway.

And then rushed at me, an invisible terror except for the suds now streaming down its chest.

Chapter Seven

I should have shifted out and let my bodyguards deal with it, but it happened so fast that I reacted instead, sending a time wave that froze whatever it was in its tracks.

Or, to be more precise, in midair.